The top 10 firms have agreed not to hire people straight from training with other companies and are insisting on a notice period before employees can quit, said industry officials in the technology hub Bangalore.

"One view is all firms agree not to poach from each other. The other is that it is not a practical solution as you need to have experienced people working somewhere else," said Suren Rasaily, head of NIIT's Planetworkz, a company which trains people for outsourcing.

"What should be done and what is possible is that even when you hire a person some minimum level of ethics have to be followed," said Rasaily, who is also the chief of HR Strategy Group of India's top IT body, the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).

Rasaily said if one client suffered due to exit of employees the whole sector and the country also suffered a setback.

"But one should not behave like a cartel and there is no hard rule that one cannot hire from each other," he told AFP, adding Nasscom would not impose the code.

"It is not our purpose to behave like a regulatory authority. We came up with some practices and we encourage our members to follow these practices. More and more members are following it and when they follow it they are seeing the positive benefits," he said.

Industry officials said the numbers of people leaving their jobs in the sector were high, ranging between 20 and 30 percent.

Nasscom said half of the employees, mostly men and women between the age of 20 and 25, left their outsourcing jobs to join other sectors or for higher studies.

"So the actual attrition is half of about 30 percent. At the same time one should make sure that the rate should not go up," Rasaily said.

India's outsourcing sector is highly competitive and logged about 60 percent growth in the year ended March 2003. It is forecast to grow by 55 percent to 3.6 billion dollars in the current fiscal year. Last year it employed more than 100,000 people.

R. Bhatnagar, head of Business Process Outsourcing of Cognizant Technology, one of the top 10 outsourcing firms, said he was in favour of the code as poaching was unethical.

"That is not something that is desirable. When one is hiring from a company it should not be a 'drop dead hire' when the guy leaves without notice and turns up for work the next day somewhere else. That is a cannibalisation of skills," he said.

He said "the merry-go-around" indulged by some employees was detrimental to the growth of the industry.

"There were quite a few cases where the processes took a hit as people have suddenly moved out. Attrition rates are high as firms are taking the easy way of hiring trained people rather than going through the training exercise (themselves)," he said.

Others said their main source of worry was "uncalled-for-solicitations."

"People soliciting a young person, looking for a career, and confusing the individual with better economic options is wrong," said Arjun Vaznaik, chief operating officer of Tracmail, a Bombay-based outsourcing firm.

"I think the good thing is that the pressure (for a code of ethics) is coming from below. Clients and young people entering the workforce are both driving this mandate.

"We have to find a formal way without legislation and policing. The industry must police itself," he said.

SPACE.WIRE